Mots Flottants

'Elle est tombee amoureuse. Les garcons disent rock n' roll!'

Last week Ma Fille was singing this in the shower. She's learned all these little diddies from the school playground. Most are accompanied with hand clapping. You know, the kind we did in elementary school where you'd clap together from the top and bottom, then straight ahead, then your own hands together, starting over again and again to the rhythm of the chant.

She's one of those kids who wants to know everything about words. She was annoyed when she first started reading and couldn't stop reading all the signs around her....on buses, billboards, shop windows.

Now all those signs are in French. And she's still reading. She and I are constantly trying to figure things out. 'Venir comme vous etes!' 'Gagnez un voyage!' 'Les bons plans de l'ete.' We'll shout it out when we've got it translated. Woo hoo! Another one down.

So we work out all these songs. Like the one about the witch who ate too much chocolate and got a stomach ache then had to hide from all the children. It's cuter in French.

So it was with 'elle est tombee amoureuse'.

S: 'What's elle est tombee Mommy?'
M: 'That means she fell.'
S: 'Hmmmm, she fell, she fell, she fell? What's amoureuse?'
M: 'I'm not sure.'
S:  'Oh, Mommy! Amoureuse is love! She fell in LOVE!'.
M: 'And all the boys say rock n roll.' HA!

This is how it goes. All these words float around in our heads just waiting for us to piece them together.

Raised in Liberty

As I stood at the kitchen counter, dismembering and plucking stray hairs from a chicken and prying off her little silver bijou, I thought, “Wonder why the Europeans aren’t so fussed about these things?” And that led me to think, ‘Why are we Americans so bothered by some chicken feathers, innards, and the like?’
We like to see our dinners as far removed from the actual living creature as possible. I know people who don’t like buffalo wings or Thanksgiving turkey because they too closely resemble the animal. And forget about shoving a live, wriggling lobster head first into a pot of boiling water…unless of course you’re my fearless friend Abby.
No, we like our food to look like it never breathed air, walked around with a silver anklet, or batted long, brown eyelashes at fellow future hamburgers. Baby chickens are cute and fluffy, cows are favorites at the petting zoo, and forget about eating a petit lapin!
It is this that sets us apart food wise. We get all squeamish and anthropomorphic while the French just look on it as their natural right in the pecking order to eat good, rich food. Foie gras  (literally, fat liver) is an abomination to some, escargot are snails, pig brains are well, brains!?, and let’s not even start on cheval. Ma fille is still traumatized by the packaged horse steaks at the Hyper-U.
We just see things differently, that’s all. I’m actually getting used to being closer to my food. In the old days, women would step outside, snatch up a chicken and wring her neck for supper. I would never be able to go that far but at least they knew where their chicken had been.
Back to my poulet. My fat bird may have been slightly feathered but at least she was elévé en liberté or the more romantic translation, 'total freedom'. The French are big on liberty. It’s first in their national motto, liberté, égalité, fraternité, and chickens deserve no different. It’s like this: embrace your food, know where it comes from (preferably France), and above all, cook it well and eat it. If you don’t enjoy it then it was all for naught. And what a pity that would be.

Whatever

Yesterday was a momentous day.

It was the kids’ last day of French school and I can’t believe they’ve done it.

I can’t tell you how much I worried over the move here; bilingual school v. national school, if the kids would be miserable, that the French schools would be too strict and squelch all the happiness and imagination out of my happy, free children.

As usual, it turns out that my fears were groundless.The more I do in life the more I find this to be the case.

We chose a French public school rather than bilingual on the advice of many and it turned out to be the best decision we’ve made.Our school is warm and friendly and I’ve been impressed with the teachers’ ability to help my kids integrate and feel welcome regardless of language.The Middlest’s teacher spoke not a word of English, yet we stumbled through together and she accepted him with bisous and patience.

There were swimming lessons at an indoor pool every Friday morning; a bus took children and volunteer parents to our nearby public pool for lessons, teachers in swimsuits, monitoring the class.This is public school, remember.

The school fetes and spectacles were block parties with a show. Even the moustachioed mayor was there.

The kids can write in cursive now and Ma Fille knows her times tables up to 5, en francais. Cinq fois cinq est vingt-cinq. Warm, kind, welcoming AND educational.

And you know about the lunches, right?!

All of this made me feel happy to bursting; proud and overwhelmed with what they’ve accomplished and how brave they’ve been.
As we were driving to school yesterday morning I was telling them so. I was waxing poetic, talking about life and how for me the trick is how you handle fears and insecurities. About how a life well lived is about doing things that are outside your comfort zone, being open to the new and unknown, and realizing that nothing is as scary as it seems.
Apparently, all my kids heard was this, ‘blah, blah, blah, blabbedy blah’ because when I finished my soliloquy and asked for their opinions, Ma Fille replied, ‘whatever'.

{French lessons}

Whatever. So what. French school, French language, French fries. It’s all the same to me.